Nutrition Journey Part 1

Hello!

For my latest post I will be breaking it into three parts.  The first part will contain information about food labels and how to understand the fine print companies use to sell their product.  The second will consist of ingredients and the amount of each in a product. Finally we will look at products through educated eyes and see that what they tell us may not be what is actually in their product.

In recent years people have become much more aware of what the numbers on the nutrition facts mean in terms of fat, carbohydrate and protein content, as well as understanding the total calories that are in said product.  It is my theory that many companies are now exploiting serving sizes in order to buffer the numbers on those nutrition facts.  What do I mean by buffering?  Well, first we must understand that companies need to sell their product by advertising to the approptie group that they want to buy their product.  If they wish to sell calorie friendly foods to those watching their calories, then their main goal is to advertise their product as having less or better yet, no calories compared to their competitors. The government has a strict set of rules that companies must abide by when they label their product, however there are many loopholes that allow a company to "hide" numbers so they may better advertise the product as the most appealing one on the shelf.

Servings are where one of these the loopholes can occur.  When you read the numbers on the nutrition facts, those are the numbers that exist in the serving size the company based its results on.  This number however, dose not necessarily make up the entire content of the containter of food.  Let's look at an example:

As we see the serving size is one ounce.  That means in 1 ounce of this food the numbers that are presented are what you put into your body.  But, look closely, the servings in the bag are 4.  That would mean multiplying every number by four if you were to eat the entire bag of whatever this product is.  That may seem like a lot to eat, but think about this; if this was a label to a popular rainbow colored candy(which it is not) I doubt many of us would be eating only one ounce of the bag and thus, eating all four ounces doesn't seem to be so much.

Let's look at this label. Notice anything? It is in fact the same product as above, but the difference is the serving sizes.  Rather than showing one ounce per serving and having four ounces per container, this time there is only one serving, but the same product is in the box.  I have multiplied the above numbers by four, which would give you the numbers you see here.  Same product as above, just not divided into multiple portions, which now seems like a lot more at a first glance.

Now, when I pick up label A and compare it to label B, even though they may be similar products and in essence contain the same exact numbers, product A looks a little less calorie dense to the untrained eye.  Companies know this and this is how they begin to sell their product off as the better of the two.  Pay attention and notice some serving sizes that seem to be very odd, like 8 chips or 2.25 ounces or the phrase "about".  That makes up one serving and we know that there may be many servings per container.

Legally the company has followed the FDA guidelines when labeling their product, however, they have used a little deduction to help their product stand out.  Now that you know a serving size is really only one part of the equation you also know those numbers may need to be multiplied to truly show the exact values.  In the next post we will also talk about the other two loopholes companies use to get around and make their food more appealing, but the scary things is it may not be the exact numbers you put into your body.  Stay tuned for more.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" -Wayne Gretzky 

*I am not a registered nutritionist or dietitian.  The information presented is for education purposes only and the product is fictitious in nature.